What we built since launch
Kumi used to hand you a card and send you straight to reviews. As of this month, it does not.
Lessons now walk you through a thing properly before testing you on it. Mnemonics, look-alikes, the character out in a real sentence. That is the big one, and it is the reason to open the app this week.
Two more updates below, and one of them is a bird.
You get taught the thing before you get tested on it
Before, a lesson in Kumi was basically one card. Here is the word, here is what it means, here is maybe how you read it, good luck, now go do your reviews. Technically a lesson. Emotionally, a shrug.
Now it is a real walkthrough. When you meet something new, you get:
A mnemonic for radicals, kanji and kana, the base writing units of the language. Something to actually hang the shape on, instead of staring at it and hoping.
Where it actually shows up. For a radical, that means the kanji it commonly appears inside, so it stops being an abstract squiggle and starts being a part you recognize.
The look-alikes. The characters that will genuinely trip you up later, shown side by side, so you learn the difference now instead of in the middle of a sentence at the worst possible moment.
Real example sentences. The thing in actual Japanese, doing its job, not floating alone on a card.
And then, after all of that, reviews.
One honest note: kanji vocab and kana vocab do not get mnemonics, and that is on purpose. Those are built out of pieces you have already learned. Handing you a mnemonic for something you can already read from its parts is just noise.
That is the whole idea, really. Teaching first. Testing second.
Try before you buy
New: you can actually try Kumi before paying for it. Revolutionary stuff. Only took us until the end of July.
The trial runs on the real app, and the number of days you have left sits right there on screen where you can see it. No urgency gimmicks, no fake pressure. If you like it, great. If not, you found that out for free, which is how it should work.
Onboarding is also much shorter now, so getting to the actual learning takes a fraction of the time it used to.
There is a bird coming
Quick peek at something that is not out yet.
We are building a small animated paper crane who lives in the app. He flies to whatever you are doing, the lesson you are in or the dictionary entry you have open, and hands you a little bit of information or a bit of philosophy, depending on his mood.
You can poke him. He reacts. We have spent more time on this than is strictly defensible.
The serious version: over time he becomes the way personalized guidance actually reaches you, instead of it being buried in settings and screens. The unserious version: he is a very cute little guy and we would like you to meet him.
He is not live yet. This is just a heads up so he does not come as a shock.
That’s it for this week.
Do mnemonics actually work for you, or do you quietly resent them?
— The Kumi Team